George Conway, the recently divorced ex-husband of former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, has launched a new political action committee aimed at preventing Donald Trump from returning to the White House in 2024.
The Anti-Psychopath PAC, as it’s called, will work to “highlight the existential threat Donald Trump poses to democracy and remind voters of the former president’s mental unfitness for office.”
[…]
“The failure to treat Trump’s behavior as pathological has led the media and the country, perversely, to treat it as normal,” Conway said in an interview explaining the rationale behind the Anti-Psychopath PAC. “And that’s a big reason why we’re seeing the double standard being applied to the candidates today.”
By Conway’s assessment, Trump’s concerning mental state and frequent bouts of erratic behavior have been brushed aside and normalized by the press and public. He hopes the new PAC can shift the narrative by rigorously scrutinizing Trump’s psychology and fitness for office to the same degree as President Biden’s.
Being a psycopath/sociopath/narcisist is not a mental illness, but a personality disorder. The affected person does not suffer from it, but the surrounding people. It is dangerous, and it cannot be treated.
That is simply untrue. Personality disorders are a class of mental illness, and people definitely suffer from them. Both NPD and ASPD are in the DSM and have treatment available. I’m not saying they don’t hurt folks, but saying it can’t be treated is also not the way to go.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder
Where in those sources does it say that it’s an illness? It says it’s a disorder.
Also, it states the prognoses is “poor”.
That is trying to play with semantics. A disorder is an illness
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_disorder
That doesn’t mean people should not get treatment or that treatment is not available. Saying there is no treatment encourages folks with NPD or ASPD to not seek treatment, which is actually what puts people in danger (themselves and others). Also, part of the reason the prognosis is poor is because we don’t have enough data, so instead of discouraging treatment, we should encourage it so we can actually learn more.
Semantics are important here to differenciate between different ways of dealing with it properly. People should know that narcissists/psycopaths/sociopaths cannot change to the better, because the inherent nature is not accepting any flaw. Only by knowing this other people can protect themselves by not keeping contact to them. It’s the only way to protect yourself.
Then you should probably get your semantics correct. Did you look at the definition of mental disorder that was linked? Because the first sentence says “A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness,[6] a mental health condition,[7] or a psychiatric disability,[2] is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning.” If you follow the source listed under that [6], the source from the National Library of Medicine says “Mental disorders (or mental illnesses) are conditions that affect your thinking, feeling, mood, and behavior” in the first sentence.
Again, this is simply not true and the stigma that it presents is what actually hurts people. From wikipedia: “Management of narcissistic personality disorder has not been well studied, however many treatments tailored to NPD exist.[8][1]” If you follow those sources, one leads to a book dedicated to treating NPD. The second leads to a Journal that has a treatment outline.
And: “Psychotherapy, also known as “talk” therapy, has been found to help treat patients with ASPD.[178] Schema therapy is also being investigated as a treatment for ASPD.[179] A review by Charles M. Borduin features the strong influence of multisystemic therapy (MST) that could potentially improve this issue. However, this treatment requires complete cooperation and participation of all family members.[180]” Following the sources on those pages lead to studies outlining treatment of that disorder.
I understand people with these disorders can and do hurt the people around them, but saying there is no treatment only gets more people hurt. Do not encourage people to not get help, that is fucked up in so many ways.
You linked “Mental Disorder”, which can be a whole bunch of things including mental illnesses, but I’m talking about “Personality Disorder” specifically, which can almost never be cured.
The question is who we should try to protect. You can tell a narcisist to seek help for sure, but also tell others to stay away from that narcisist until he/she has changed to an empathetic being (which rarely happens). Narcisists don’t see a reason to change, as they feel entiled to see other people in their lives as resources. Each of them is hurting many people through manipulation and explotation. If you meet a psycopath/sociotpath/narcisist, there’s only one advice: run!
Personality disorders are a class of mental disorder, which is what I said in the beginning before needing to explain mental disorder and mental illness are the same thing.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder
NPD and ASPD are class B disorders (2 of 4), but there are Class A and Class C as well. All are treatable to some degree or another. Again, I understand people can be hurt, but please please please stop with the generalization. It puts a lot of stigma on people, makes them feel like there is no chance of treatment, and overall makes things worse.
None of those things are true. True crime media’s misuse of sciencey sounding words is gonna be the death of us. Pds are mental illnesses, pds are treatable, and psychopath is generally a pejorative term for someone having an experience that the dsm would categorize as psychosis.
Edit: I want to add that the criteria for personality disorders is not cut and dry, but has a lot to do with social norms and a lot of marginalized people (i.e. women) get scooped up into those categories whether or not they actually fit them. Insurance (or other healthcare systems) also require diagnoses to pay for treatment, so the process is often sloppy and rushed. The truth is that mental illness categories are not irrefutable truths or a reliable way to tell much about an actual person from afar. They’re just different kinds of people + circumstance. So you really can’t say that “people with X are BAD and always dangerous”. You just don’t know. The world and people are just not predictable or simple that way.
The sad truth is that part of being a narcissist, psychopath, or sociopath is not accepting any flaws. These three types of disorders are self-sustaining; their inherent nature makes it almost impossible to change for the better.
They are classified as personality disorders because they involve stable, deeply ingrained patterns of behavior and thought, rather than episodic disruptions typical of mental illnesses. Treatment is challenging due to the ingrained nature of these traits, lack of self-awareness, and resistance to change. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and other therapeutic approaches can help manage symptoms but cannot cure the fundamental personality traits. The primary goal is to mitigate the disorder’s impact on the individual’s life and those around them.
This is just not true, though. Not according to the DSM or to anyone actually living with these conditions. Tons of people with personality disorders seek help, want relief from their symptoms, and have no desire to hurt people. There are a bunch of vlogs and articles and podcasts by the exact people you are saying do not exist. NPD and ASPD are just two highly stigmatized disorders that plenty of people live with. It sucks to struggle with social functioning, so of course people seek help.
It is also generational - the idea that ‘x people never get help’ probably has a lot to do with how flawed mental healthcare has been in most places in the past 100 years. Even seeking treatment for something like anxiety can still lead to bad outcomes today, so it makes sense that people struggling with something very stigmatized would be more likely to hesitate to see someone about it. People can still lose their rights over mental illness in many countries, not to mention their social status/ability to find work/etc. the risks are real.
Sociopath and psychopath are not medical terms. They don’t refer to anything real, they’re a crime-media thing. Also, people who say that anyone who is violent or abusive has a personality disorder are talking nonsense - lundy bancroft’s Why Does He Do That has a good section on why/how abusers usually are not mentally ill (or are not doing abuse because of their mental illness) but instead want an excuse for their behavior. Abuse is almost always intentional and thought through. It’s about power, it isn’t an accident.
Most mental illnesses are also not ‘only episodic’. Ocd is all the time, depression is all the time, etc. There is a lot of misinformation here. I would suggest getting info about mental health from reputable medical sources and people who live with the conditions you’re talking about. There are a lot of myths out there.